Charms - Werewolf AU
Khasar closed the door behind him with a light click of the latch and Evie looked up from her book. She blinked in the limited light. The single flickering candle on the bedside table was barely enough to fill the whole room with its warm glow.
He tip-toed over to the far side of the bed where she was sitting on a little stool, keeping watch over her charge.
Kai barely fit on the bed crammed into her spare bedroom. Evie’s little clinic was used to little clientele and his feet hung off the end of the mattress, even with his upper body propped up and scoot back against the wall behind his head. The light glittered on the silken thread holding closed the tears in his belly and across his chest. Her needlework was far finer than Ty’s and infinitely neater. If not for the pale green poultices spread across them and left to air out, they may have gone unnoticed entirely. His chest rose and fell with every deep breath, sleeping more soundly than Khasar had seen him rest in a long time.
Soft sleeping sounds lingered on the air, but the snoring wasn’t from Kai. Tucked in a corner, propped up in a chair, Ty made little snorting sounds with every breath. The result of poor sleeping posture. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep keeping watch over his partner, but he wasn’t immune to the side effect exhaustion of long jobs over long nights.
Khasar chuckled a little under his breath and sat down on the floor next to Evie. He had a little bag of snacks and was munching slowly on the wafers.
“How’s dad doing?” he asked in a whisper between quiet crunches.
“Dad?” she asked.
He pointed to Kai and said, “dad,” and then pointed to Ty and said, “mom.”
“Better. He stopped tossing and now he can heal properly,” Evie whispered back with a chuckle. She closed the book in her hand, keeping her place with her thumb so she could lean over Kai to gently press on the flesh around one of the longer gashes. It oozed clear from the wound, and she settled back on the seat. “Much better. When you told me about them, I didn’t think this was how our first meeting would go.”
“What do you mean? This was the best possible way for you to get to know them.”
“Bleeding?”
“It’s Kai’s natural state of being,” Khasar explained.
She gave him a sly look with a raised eyebrow, and he grinned back and then pointed at his brothers in turn. “Kai’s usually bleeding and quiet and Ty’s controlling and bossy until he falls asleep.”
Evie held a hand to her lips to keep the laugh in. “They weren’t so bad.”
“Uh huh, I watched him try to tell you how to do your job.”
“It’s cute,” she reassured Khasar looking between the sleeping men, “it means he cares a lot.”
Khasar chewed his next wafer more slowly, thoughtfully. “…yeah, well. I’m glad you were still awake all the same.”
“Anytime, Khasar.” She opened her book again, shuffled in place, and then closed it again, this time setting it on the nightstand beside the candle. “May I ask you something?”
“Anytime,” he echoed.
“What’s this?”
Khasar straightened his posture to look over at her hands as she leaned down to show him a tray of odds and ends. Bloodied splinters and what was left of Kai’s shirt were unceremoniously set aside along with Kai’s necklace. She was pointing to the wooden charm on the leather string.
“Oh, it’s the pendant I made for him. Ty has one too.”
“You made it?” she asked.
“Try not to sound so surprised,” Khasar teased, “I whittle sometimes. I can do a lot of different things.”
She put the tray back down but picked up the necklace and got off the stool. Khasar had to rotate himself sideways so she could step around him to take the piece over to a basin of water to rinse it. The blood mostly came away, but it would still stain in some places, adding to the patchwork of previously acquired discolorations, nicks, notches, and dings.
The pendant was roughly the size of a half-dollar, big enough to be hard to lose but small enough to not be in the way. It was perfectly circular with a simple design carved into one side of it; a crescent moon with a single star nestled in the created space. In the middle of the star was a small disc of pure silver.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly. She gently placed it on a soft towel and started to reverently dry it.
“It’s something,” Khasar said with a shrug, “I couldn’t let them go out there with nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Evie asked. She returned to her stool so he could keep his voice soft. No need to wake the two hunters when they were finally getting much needed rest.
He popped another wafer in his mouth and sat up a little straighter. “You know how my brothers don’t come to church?”
“I’ve seen your oldest brother on occasion… I guess they don’t attend do they?”
“Most hunters wear crucifixes to repel evil. They burn vampires and some ghosts and stuff, but they only work because they’re a symbol of faith.”
“And your brothers don’t have faith…” she supplied.
Khasar nodded and then shook his head, “Not in the church no, but they do have faith.”
“Faith in what?” Evie asked after a quiet pause. She ran her fingers over the moon and star.
“In each other, in our family, in the world around them, stuff like that.”
She tilted her head and held the pendant up to the light, twisting it back and forth so the silver glittered. “Then, why the moon?”
“When I was little, Ty used to explain faith to me using the sky,” Khasar explained. He ate another wafer and kept talking with his mouth full. “He used to say something like, faith is knowing the sun will rise, that the moon will wax and wane. Faith is knowing that the stars still shine above the clouds, no matter how heavy the rain. Faith is knowing that no matter how dark the night, he and Kai would always come home to me, and they had faith that I’d always be waiting for them, even when we’re too far apart to see.” He swallowed the wafer and dug around in the little bag for more of the intact ones. “It kinda rhymes, either way, they knew the crucifixes wouldn’t work, so they never wore them. They won’t let me go fight with them so I just,” he paused, sighed to himself, ate another, and said, “I just wanted to help.”
Evie sniffled and Khasar jumped and hurried to console her, “Ah! What did I say?!”
She waved a hand and then covered her face, still sniffling and wiping the way the couple of rogue tears, “Oh! No! I’m so sorry! It’s just a very sweet story! I don’t mean to weep. You love them very much…”
“Yeah, but don’t tell them that,” he insisted.
“I won’t, promise.” She opened the little towel to present the pendant to him and he took it from her. It was small in his hand, the leather string and handful of beads rested between his middle three fingers. Khasar brushed across the surface of it with his thumb, feeling all the bumps and ridges of the carving, as well as the scratches.
“Does it still work if it has pieces missing?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s just a symbol of their faith,” Khasar explained, “it’s the faith that makes it powerful and protective.”
“And the silver?”
“Werewolves are weak to silver. I wanted to protect them from everything, not just vampires. Not that it mattered, they still get hurt.”
Evie slid off the stool to sit on the ground next to him. “But they’re alive and they must treasure it very much.” She reached over to touch the pendant. Even the back was polished and cared for. The leather string it was on was strong and recently replaced with no signs of fraying.
“It’s old,” Khasar admitted. He smiled to himself anyway. “I am proud of it though. Even if it’s a little lopsided. I think if I made it again, I’d want to try and cast it in iron, maybe make the silver an inlay instead of glued on.”
“Do you want to?” she asked.
“Remake them?”
“Yeah.”
“Kinda yeah.”
“Can I help you?”
Khasar tilted his head this time. “You’d want to.”
“You’re my friend,” she said with a soft smile, “and I know how much you love them. The way you talk about them both, I feel like I know them so well already, and I like them a lot. I want to protect them too. If that’s okay.”
Khasar grinned. “Teach Ty that stitching technique and I think he’d like you too.”
Evie beamed and bumped Khasar with her shoulder. “What about Kai?”
“Too soon to tell,” he said seriously and held the bag of snacks out to her, “who knows though, maybe he’ll take a liking to you.”
She wiggled in place and reached to take a wafer.
“Hey Khasar,” she mumbled around the dry cracker.
“Yeah?”
“Are these communion wafers?”
